Just waiting for support for Scottish independence to rise 60 per cent would be “mental,” Ash Regan has said. 

Speaking to the Through A Scottish Prism podcast the former SNP leadership hopeful, called on her party to be more “belligerent” and “aggressive” in its campaigning.

The comments from Edinburgh Eastern MSP came as a new poll put support for independence at 53%. 

The latest Scottish political monitor from Ipsos had no at 47%. While that was down three points since December, it was far less than the 10 point fall suffered by the SNP over the same time period.  

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The pollster found that Humza Yousaf’s party would take 41% of the vote at the next Westminster election, down from 51% in December.

Scottish Labour has increased its support, and is in second place, with 29% of the vote, with the Tories a distant third on 17%. 

Last weekend, the SNP announced it would hold a members-only convention in Dundee on June 24 which would be “solely focused on how Scotland is able to hold a legally binding independence referendum. 

During the leadership campaign, Ms Regan stood on a platform of using every election as a de facto referendum. If independence parties won a majority of the vote, that would be taken as a mandate to start negotiations for secession with London. 

Speaking to the podcast, Ms Regan was scathing about the SNP’s plans for independence. She said: “This idea that they (the SNP) were putting forward last week that we just keep working away and playing by the rules and we just try to get support up to 60% and [the UK Government] will just do what we want.

“I fundamentally think that’s mental, and that is not going to work.”

Asked if the party is close to “getting back on track” as it relates to independence, Ms Regan said: “I’m quite concerned about where we are right now.

“It doesn’t have to be terminal, I think we need to change the way we’re doing things in certain areas.

“I believe we can look, we should look, at the last eight years and learn from what’s gone before.

“That doesn’t mean you do everything totally different, but you have to look at it, analyse it and think ‘what worked and what didn’t work?’

“Doing things the same just because we did them the same before isn’t going to work.”

READ MORE: New YouGov MRP poll predicts SNP wipe out in Glasgow

Ms Regan added she is “sensing” anger and frustration from current party members and those who have recently left the party.

She said the independence convention needed to be an event which allows members to speak freely and decide on a way forward for the movement.

“I think it’s right that we have a conference, and it is a conference, it isn’t anything else… to discuss the independence strategy,” she said.

“But at that conference, we should be talking about everything, and everyone should be entitled to speak and we should be able to debate different ideas and then see what comes out of that.

“I’m concerned that it looks like we’re only going to be allowed to talk about one strategy, which is the referendum strategy, which I think has run out of road now and we should be moving on from that.”